Curious Incidents!

A while ago, as instructed by a writing course no doubt, I started writing (and keeping) reviews of books that I read. Books included Googlewhack Adventure by Dave Gorman, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, White Teeth by Zadie Smith etc.

Now understanding (by reviewing) how these books 'work' will help my own writing, in some cases and so I will copy my reviews to this blog from today. But reviewing books that a) are not novels or b) I did not finish will not assist me, I feel.

So there will be no review of Dave's or Zadie's book, alas. (Zadie is no doubt a writer of the highest order but I just couldn't read on, and I got half-way through, too.)

I will include my review of Mark Haddon's book, however. And here it is...

'Review' of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime written by Mark Haddon

This is a fabulous book about an autistic boy called Christopher and his view of the world as he tries to discover who killed his neighbour's dog. It's almost a guide into 'how to write a novel' as well as 'how to research', 'how to write from child's point of view' and 'how to understate things'.

For me, it's a great insight into how to deal with a difficult person (and maybe shows all of us that we're a little more difficult to deal with than we'd like to admit to). So, in Christopher's case one follows simple rules: try to see things from their perspective, completely. E.g. if she lies then why does she lie?

I could go on and on about why I love this book but I didn't when I wrote the review and I'm not going to make it up here. Instead, here's the last few paragraphs of the book.

:-)

(That's a smiley face emoticon, and it means I'm happy, Christopher. Okay?)

And then I will get a 1st class honours degree and I will become a scientist...

And I know I can do this because I went to London on my own, and because I solved the mystery of who killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and that means I can do anything.